ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUOTES IV
U.S. President (1809-1865)
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to William H. Herndon, July 10, 1848
I believe I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
response to a serenade, December 6, 1864
You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 22, 1855
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, June 16, 1858
Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, July 17, 1858
Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 22, 1842
Without the assistance of that Divine Being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, February 11, 1861
We cannot escape history.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
annual message, December 1, 1862
If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854
Military glory -- that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in opposition to the Mexican-American War, January 12, 1848
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to John T. Stuart, January 23, 1841
I hope nobody has understood me as trying to sustain the doctrine that we have a right to quarrel with Kentucky or Virginia, or any of the slave States, about the institution of slavery--thus giving the judge an opportunity to make himself eloquent and valiant against us in fighting for their rights. I expressly declared in my opening speech that I had neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery or any other existing institution. Then what becomes of all his eloquence in behalf of the rights of States, which are assailed by no living man?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, July 17, 1858
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to expect it.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862
Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in the United States House of Representatives, January 12, 1848
The negative principle that no law is free law, is not much known except among lawyers.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854
And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that Judge Douglas, and whoever, like him, teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his fast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
It follows as a matter of course that a half-hour answer to a speech of an hour and a half can be but a very hurried one.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. Why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
fragment of a speech from 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
If the Republicans, who think slavery is wrong, get possession of the general government, we may not root out the evil at once, but may at least prevent its extension. If I find a venomous snake lying on the open praire, I seize the first stick and kill him at once. But if that snake is in bed with my children, I must be more cautious. I shall, in striking the snake, also strike the children, or arouse the reptile to bite the children. Slavery is the venomous snake in bed with the children. But if the question is whether to kill it on the prairie or put it in bed with other children, I think we'd kill it!
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"Speech at Hartford", Evening Press, March 5, 1860